


heart heavy with the hate of some other man's belief

by decinq



Series: did we cause this wreckage by breathing [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, metal arm fuck farm, some vague ultron spoilers, such as the wood clip and general mayhem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 04:05:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2678363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decinq/pseuds/decinq
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t have a single memory that lacks Steve’s shining eyes and too big smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	heart heavy with the hate of some other man's belief

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'd, all errors are my own.
> 
>  
> 
> (this probably arguably can be read alone but it certainly will make more sense if you read the first part [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2546561).)

 

"eyes look sharp and steady  
into the empty parts of me  
still my heart is heavy  
with the hate of some other man's belief"  
-foreigner's god, hozier

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky knows, in retrospect, that it was stupid for them to get so comfortable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve has always been the way he is. Not to say he hasn’t changed, because that is undeniable. But at Steve’s very core there is a skinny, angry, bloody-mouthed kid, and he will never grow past that.

 

There are version of him that exist outside of himself—the version of Steve that exists in history books, the version of Steve that exists in the modern media, the version that Fury thinks he knows…all of these people are simply shadows on the wall of Steve’s actual life. He has been grateful, for the most part, to be a part of history without ever showing his cards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve and Bucky have been living in the farmhouse for nearly a year when Bucky, who had been lounging on the couch all afternoon, sits up, straight as a board, and stops breathing.

 

“Buck?” Steve asks, worry in his voice.

 

“Shut up,” Bucky says. He turns his head slightly, waits for what must only be a few seconds but what feel like ions, and says, “Put a gun in the back of your jeans.” Bucky is up and out of the room faster than Steve can process.

 

Then, after the screen door swings shut and settles, he hears it: tires on dirt, a very quiet engine in the distance.

 

They have a handgun duct taped under the kitchen sink, and Steve tucks it into the back of his pants like Bucky said. Steve walks outside and can’t see Bucky anywhere.

 

The closest thing to the property gate that gives Steve an excuse to be out of the house in the cold weather is the axe that is stuck into a large piece of wood that they use to chop firewood against. In addition to being an excuse to be outside, it’s another weapon that Steve can use should he need.

 

 

 

 

The last person he expects to see pulling into their dirt drive way is Tony Stark.

 

 

 

 

“What the fuck are you doing here,” Steve asks, not dropping the axe.

 

“Hello to you, too.”

 

“Do you have a phone with you? Take the battery out now.”

 

Tony smiles, walks towards him. “I left everything with Hill’s bugs in my hotel room, which is three hours from here, I’ll have you know. Do you know how boring—“

 

Steve swings the axe into the wood harder than he should, wedging it in deeper than is helpful. “How did you find me here? What do you want?”

 

Tony sighs. “You know I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t important. You gave what’s left of SHIELD a pretty good scare, Hill thought you were dead for a few hours before she found traffic scans of your license plate.”

 

“What do you want?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Isn’t that why we fight? To end the fight? So we can go home?”

 

Steve tears a log in half, and Tony jumps.

 

“Every time someone tries to win a war before it starts, innocent people die.” He takes a deep breath. “Every time.”

 

Tony looks away.

 

There’s heavy silence for long moments. Steve wonders where Bucky is hiding.

 

“I’ll think about it,” Steve says. “I need you to go, but I’ll meet you outside the courthouse in Little Rock tomorrow after dinner time. 9 o’clock.”

 

“Thank you,” Tony says, nodding.

 

“I haven’t said yes.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve lifts the axe above his head, swings down, and shatters the large piece of firewood.

 

He doesn’t feel any better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky appears at Steve’s side when Steve is about to punch a sizeable hole into the side of the house. “Steve. Stevie, stop.”

 

Bucky’s voice in steady, and Steve can feel it wrapping around the red haze in his mind, calming him quickly.

 

“What was Stark’s kid doing here?”

 

Steve takes a shuddering breath. “He wants my help.”

 

 

 

 

Bucky is sitting up in bed when Steve finally comes into their bedroom. He climbs onto the bed, and settles over Bucky’s legs. He looks at his hands for a long time. Bucky eventually closes his book, places it on the bedside table. He’s started reading with a pair of reading glasses because he was getting headaches without them, and he takes those off too.

 

“Steve, pal, you can just say no.”

 

“He knows we’re here. They must all know. I was so stupid, they’ve probably known the entire time.”

 

“Who cares?” Bucky asks, reaching out to run his fingers over Steve’s knuckles.

 

A tear finally falls from Steve’s lashes. He whispers, “I just wanted to be happy with you,” and it has more weight than anything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They fuck outside, the next morning.

 

Bucky presses Steve into the outer wall of the shed and drops to his knees and opens Steve’s fly before Steve can get a word in edge wise. Steve’s not hard, but Bucky knows it doesn’t take but a second, and he presses his nose into Steve’s pubic hair.

 

“I love you,” Bucky says, before licking the shaft of Steve’s cock. “I love you,” he repeats before he sucks the head into his mouth. Steve throws his head against the wall behind him, hard, and moans.

 

It’s fast but it’s tender, it feels heavy and serious. When Steve comes, he holds eye contact with Bucky through it, his eyes glassy.

 

“Bucky,” Steve says, pulling him up from under his arms. “Buck,” he says, kissing Bucky hard on the mouth, “I love you. I’m sorr—“

 

Bucky kisses him quiet, and keeps kissing him until it turns hungry again, lips and teeth and heaving gasps of breath.

 

When Steve bites hard at Bucky’s neck, Bucky flips them so that Steve’s face is pressed into the side of the shed, his hands held together behind his back. Bucky presses the length of his body into Steve’s back, and Steve pushes his hips back to meet him.

 

Bucky holds him tight enough that it must be uncomfortable, but when he kisses Steve’s nape, it’s soft like before. Bucky presses his pelvis to Steve’s ass, and they both groan. Bucky holds Steve’s hands in his metal one, and reaches into the pocket of his pants for the lube he’d put there before meeting Steve by their garden.

 

He pops the cap open and releases Steve’s hand. “Get your pants off,” he says, and Steve scrambles to comply. Steve is still turned towards the shed, but he turns his face towards Bucky’s as he stands, his pants and underwear kicked off to the side.  Bucky pulls his own pants down but doesn’t kick them off, leaves them around his calves. Then, Bucky moves quickly, grabbing for Steve’s wrists again, this time holding them above Steve’s head. He bites at Steve’s shoulder before he runs his fingers along the cleft of Steve’s ass, index circling around his hole.

 

“C’mon,” Steve says, and Bucky pushes a slick finger into him.  He pumps his hand slowly, and Steve pushes back against his fingers as much as he can while being pinned to the wall. He adds a second finger, and after a few more moments of Steve keening, Bucky slips a third finger into Steve’s body.

 

“Jesus, Bucky, come on,” Steve says, and Bucky pulls his fingers out while he squeezes tightly around Steve’s wrist. He slicks his dick before he lines himself at Steve’s entrance and presses his hips forward. Steve makes a low noise while Bucky holds still, and then he moans again when Bucky starts to move.

 

Their movements grow frantic quickly, and Bucky presses Steve into the wall with more force at the same moment he bends his knees slightly, changing the angle, and Steve’s breath hitches. “There,” he says, his voice raspy.

 

Bucky licks at Steve’s shoulder as he pulls out, pushes back in, and Steve says, “Fuck.” Bucky feels impossibly hard, impossibly close, he feels amazing, perfect, and when Steve says, “Again. Harder,” Bucky has to close his eyes.

 

He pushes into Steve with more vigor, brings his other hand to join their hands above Steve’s head, tightens his grip more. Steve comes with a jolt, squeezes his fingers tight around Bucky’s, his body convulsing around Bucky.

 

It sends Bucky over the edge, the emotion and the sensation pooling together and whiting out Bucky’s vision. He pulls out after a few minutes, and release Steve’s hands. Steve wraps his arms around Bucky and pulls him flush against him. 

 

“Thank you,” Steve says, and Bucky thinks it must mean something else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky’s not sure why, but it feels like a goodbye, like Steve thought it would be the last time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I’m going with you,” Bucky says.

 

“Don’t be stupid, Buck, come on. Just stay. Read, water the plants for me.”

 

“They know I’m here with you. If Stark can just pull up in his car, they know I’m here.”  Steve looks mad, but Bucky presses. “I won’t stay here. I want to come with you. You’re not forcing me, they’re not forcing me. I’m choosing that.”

 

Steve sighs. “Fine,” he says. Then, “Will we be able to come back here?”

 

“Will you want to?” Bucky asks.

 

“Doesn’t feel the same,” he says. “I hate them for taking that away.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They meet Stark, agree to drive back to New York but they insist on following behind. They’ve thrown their bags into the trunk of Steve’s sedan. They left Bucky’s old pick up truck at the farmhouse. “To keep the garden company,” Bucky had said, smiling, but Steve had just frowned and said, “My crops are going to die.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When they get to Stark Tower, Bucky stands behind Steve the entire time. They don’t have to scan their eyes or their fingerprints, they just get in an elevator and meet Stark on the floor that holds his lab.

 

When Banner and Natasha explain the issue with Ultron to the two of them, Bucky can see Steve’s shoulders tense, can hear his breath get shorter.

 

“It evolved beyond me,” Tony tries to reason, “We can fight it, but I can’t do it alone, and I don’t want to destroy it.”

 

“Of course we’re destroying it,” Steve says. “If you can’t control it, there’s not another option.”

 

“I agree with Rogers,” Natasha says. No one else says anything.

 

“It’s a brilliant invention, if I can just—“

 

“No,” Steve says.

 

“You haven’t even been around, Capsicle, alright. SHIELD isn’t around, and if you hadn’t noticed, most of their agents work for me now, anyway. You aren’t the boss, anymore. This is my company and I—“

 

“That’s your problem,” Steve says. “You think you’re smarter than everybody. But your robot will beat you, and that’s all I need to know. You created this thing.  That’s the hell you get to live with.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second Steve leaves the room, Stark starts to say something he thinks is witty but Bucky interrupts when he says, “Have any of you ever taken a single second to think about what this does to him?” He looks around the room at all of them, _the Avengers_ , and he scoffs. “He’s happy for once in his fucking life and you drag him back here to fight a fight he wants no part of, that he’s never wanted a part of. No wonder he didn’t want to come back here, his whole job here is to take care of a bunch of assholes who need the help less than he does.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky finds Steve sitting on a couch in the lobby of the building.

 

“I was just thinking,” Bucky says, “About that summer I got that job unloading boxes at the market, and at the end of the first week, the owner, what was his name?”

 

“Mr. Campbell,” Steve answers.

 

“Yeah, he gave me my meager few bucks, and I bought us those milk shakes. We’d had a big fight the week before, you remember?” Steve nods. “I still felt bad about it, I remember telling you I wished I’d never been your friend. That was the worst lie I ever told. Anyway,” he sits beside Steve on the couch, takes his hand in his cool mental one before continuing. “We got these milkshakes, and you were drinking yours out of the metal cup, and you had this moustache above your lip. I was only fifteen, but I remember thinking that if I could kiss you, lick it away, you’d never be mad at me again.”

 

Steve laughs, softly.

 

“What?” Bucky asks.

 

“Nothing.” Bucky squeezes Steve’s hand. “It’s nothing. That’s just…that’s a nice thing to remember.”

 

Bucky leans back against the couch.

 

“What’re we going to do?”

 

“I’ve got to help them. But I think—“ Steve takes a deep breath. “I think this is the last time. I don’t think I can do it anymore. I don’t want to be Captain America if this is what it means.”

 

“One last fight,” Bucky says. “I guess someone has to teach Stark that not doing something wrong ain't the same as doing something right.”

 

 

 

 

They get a hotel room not far from Stark Tower. Tony had offered them an entire floor but Bucky had politely declined. After being alone for an entire year save for bi-weekly trips for groceries, Bucky finds they’re both experiencing a bit of stimulus overload.

 

They need the space.

 

The sheets are tucked in too tight. Steve undresses and crawls under the hotel bedding, and pulls the sheets above his head. When Bucky joins him, Steve curls into Bucky’s middle, pushes his face into the space where Bucky’s chest and arm meet.

 

Bucky has failed him time and time again, but he wants to keep trying.

 

Bucky reaches down and runs his fingers through Steve’s hair. The touch doesn’t fix anything, not really, but Bucky feels a small bit better knowing that he can surround himself with Steve, that when they get up in the morning, they will smell like each other, that Steve’s sour morning breath will taste the same as it always does. There is an ache in Bucky’s chest that he hasn’t felt in a long time. 

 

Bucky wants to deserve Steve’s love as much as he is able.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They soldier through it.

 

It’s all they’ve known how to do since they were boys—and they were boys, the first time they went to war. Children with hopes and dreams crushed down by a failed economy and a nasty case of nostalgia for something they’d never lived.

 

 

 

 

 

“So we all know that Steve’s dark secret is that he can grow a nasty lumberjack beard. What about you, Barnes?” Tony asks while he leads Bucky to be fitted for a suit.

 

“You mean other than being a Soviet Assassin?”

 

“Day job doesn’t count.”

 

Bucky doesn’t know what to say. “I don’t think I’m that fond of pizza,” he says, simply to get a rise out of Stark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is something Bucky knows to be true:

 

 Not all locked chests contain treasures.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

It goes very poorly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s one thing to look back through broken memories and know, just by conjuring an half-remembered image, that some things hurt so much that you cannot feel them.

 

 

 

 

(Bucky remember the sounds of machinery on bone, he remembers holding his hands in front of his face and being met with metal.

 

He remembers being sixteen and watching Steve shake with a fever that should have killed him twice over, and he remembers Steve’s first rattling coughs where his palms would pull away with blood.)

 

 

 

 

 

But it’s a wholly different experience to know that something hurts so much that that you may never feel anything ever again, by comparison.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve’s shield has always been an easy to spot target, with rings around rings with a star to mark bull’s eye.

 

 

 

Steve’s shield cracks clean in half and then suddenly Steve is down, too.

 

Bucky hears Steve’s commands stop half way through an order, and the coms go quiet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve is hit with one of Ultron's blasts, and he lands a good ten feet from where he dropped his broken shield. When Bucky gets to him, he experiences a moment of compete stillness. Steve doesn't look like he's breathing, and Bucky presses his ear to Steve's chest like he used to when Steve was smaller and always sick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky has seen and done a number of terrible things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky closes his eyes and counts to ten.

 

For all of Steve's struggling before the serum—for all that his lungs and heart and sense were lagging behind his brain—he had still been tough as nails. He could have a fever of a hundred and three and lungs full of fluid, and his heart would keep beating even if his breath had slowed to a few scrappy inhales per minute.

 

"Come on," he says, and he realizes that Black Widow is talking into the coms, asking for status on Steve. He thinks: _Fuck the Avengers._ He rips his ear piece out, throws it a few feet away.

 

He knows this isn't their fault, but he blames them anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The universe feels very small and time feels very still.

 

Bucky understands: There is no way to get to the future from here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before the war, James Buchanan Barnes was a good kid.

 

Even when he’d moved out of his parents’ apartment to live in a dingy one bedroom shit hole with Steve, he’d still been a good son.

 

He went to church with his family on Sunday mornings, held Becca’s hand whenever she’d start to fidget. He’d talk to his father about work, he’d help his ma fix up the table before dinner, and he’d help with the cleaning afterwards.

 

His mother would make up a few plates and send them home with Bucky.

 

“We’ve got enough,” she would say. “There’s always space for you here, Jamie. You and Steve both, we could make room.”

 

“I know, ma.” He would say, and he’d kiss her cheek. “It’s nice to have something that’s ours, y’know?”

 

She would smile sweetly at him, and her eyes would well with tears whenever he’d make to leave at the end of the night. “Yes,” she’d say. “I know. Don’t forget this,” and she would wrap her arms around him, the dishes of leftovers stuck between them.

 

 

 

 

Bucky would push the door to their small apartment open with his shoulder, and yell out, “Ma made me bring you home dinner,” like this was somehow an annoyance, even though he and Steve both knew the Sunday leftovers were the best meals either of them had all week.

 

 

 

 

 

“If your ma wasn’t your ma,” Steve would say around a mouthful of potatoes, “I’d try to marry her.”

 

“She’d never take you,” Bucky would say. “She’s a real lady, got class and brains and makes the best casseroles in the city.”

 

“You look exactly like her and here you are stuck with me,” Steve says.

 

“Yeah, well no one ever said I got my taste from her,” Bucky would say, smiling, and his knees would knock Steve’s from under the table.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’d have married Steve at 18, if he could have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky can’t remember when he and Steve met. That’s something he should have asked about. His memories are mostly intact despite the foggy air that surrounds most of them.

 

He doesn’t have a single memory that lacks Steve’s shining eyes and too big smile.

 

 

 

 

 

He doesn’t know when he started aching for Steve. It could have been something that was always there. Even when they were just messy kids trying to fill their days any way they could, Bucky thinks he still yearned for Steve somehow.

 

He doesn’t have any other point of reference, but he thinks that love must always hurt.

 

 

There’s nothing for it. For Bucky, it’s always been Hell by another name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky’s hands are fisted in the front of Steve’s uniform, and he knows that there’s a commotion around him but he can’t hear anything except for the absence of Steve’s steady breath.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Widow appears out of nowhere, and suddenly she’s pulling at Bucky with all her strength. And she is strong, but he’s stronger, heavier, and—

 

“James, you have to let me help him,” she says, and it startles him how much she sounds like Sarah Rogers.

 

He falls back onto his heels, and she moves between him and Steve. He can’t really see what she’s doing, but he catches her removing her Widow Bites from her belt. She leans over to breathe into Steve’s mouth before she leans back.

 

“This is going to look really painful,” she says, and then a handful of Widow Bites go off against Steve’s chest. A sharp tremor runs through him and then suddenly he’s gasping in breath.

 

It sounds like an asthma attack, and Bucky’s never felt so relieved.

 

“As soon as you’re able,” Black Widow says, “Get him the hell out of here. Find cover as quickly as possible.”

 

Bucky nods but he doesn’t watch her go, couldn’t if he wanted to. He wipes at the tears in his eyes with one hand while he reaches for Steve’s cheek with the other.

 

“Stevie,” he says. “Steve, come on.”

 

Steve’s gasping turns to a sharp cough and then his eyes flutter open.

 

“Bucky,” he says, and Bucky’s shock seeps away a bit. He knows they need to get to cover as soon as possible. He turns behind them and can see Ultron and the Hulk a few blocks away. 

 

“I’m gonna need you to help me help you walk, okay?” Steve swallows and nods softly, but his head falls back against the concrete. “Steve, it’s not safe here.”

 

“Okay,” he says and it sounds rough.

 

Bucky pulls him up from under his arms and gets his arm around Steve’s middle, and then they quickly shuffle out of the destroyed street.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually, Tony Stark is able to stop Ultron.

 

Bucky doesn’t care about the details, but he signs reports and forms and sits at Steve’s bedside while he sleeps.

 

Natasha makes him shower and agrees to sit with Steve while he does so, and then she makes him eat and drink a glass of water.

 

 

 

 

 

Stark’s version of a heart monitor beeps quietly in the dark, a setting that Bucky had to ask JARVIS to activate just to ease his nerves.

 

Steve’s hand is in his when he whispers “I’ve never known what to do without you.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve wakes up after two days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clint and Bruce had forced Bucky to sleep, had said they’d wake him when Steve was conscious.

 

They don’t, not immediately, because Steve has to talk to Stark’s doctors and needs to explain what happened. Starks explains that his shield is broken, recounts what Bucky had told Hill during his (very brief) debriefing.

 

His heart had stopped for over minute. He’s lucky to be alive, let alone have no lasting signs of brain damage.

 

 

 

 

When they finally wake Bucky up and tell him Steve’s awake, they all very casually leave to do other things.

 

When Bucky walks into the room Steve’s been staying in, Steve starts to speak before he looks up, “Is Bu—” but stops when their eyes meet.

 

Bucky leans his head against the threshold and doesn’t look away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky Barnes used to be pleasantly charming; he could be obnoxious and stupid if he wanted to be. But when he was young—and the world hadn’t hefted a too heavy chip onto his shoulder—he was always chatting, words pouring from his smiling mouth like a currency.

 

He has wondered if the version him that lived before the war exists anywhere in him. He doesn’t know what or who Steve sees when he looks at him, but Bucky knows that Steve loves him, would do anything for him.

 

But Steve would, even if Bucky wasn’t the Bucky Steve wished him to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I tol—“

 

“Listen,” Bucky interrupts, and Steve’s jaw clicks shut. “I’m not saying this to hurt you. I love you. But I have to—“ he gestures at the space between them with his hand before he wipes at his eyes.

 

“When I let go of the train, I was really scared. Did you know that I didn’t volunteer, didn’t sign up? They drafted me.” Steve shakes his head a bit, but he doesn’t look surprised.

 

“Life was hell, and I don’t know what would have happened if neither of us had gone over there. I loved you so much and it felt terrible, but it was my life, you know? It may have been hard but I always liked living it, and I wanted to live it with you.

 

“And then I was falling and so much had changed. Everything was different and terrible in a different way. And I thought, if you were okay, it would be worth it. You’d get ‘em and the war would end. You’d get married to Peggy and have a couple kids, maybe name one after me. It was a nice thought, that the world would go on without me in it.”

 

“Bucky,” Steve says, sitting up against the headboard of the bed.

 

“Zola told me you were dead. They showed me the news clippings.”

 

“That was sort of the plan,” Steve says, and the corners of his mouth twist into a smile, but there’s nothing happy in it.

 

“That’s what I wanted to say,” Bucky says. “I know you want to do what’s right, and part of me gets it. But,” he takes a deep breath and has to wipe at his eyes again, “But I didn’t fight back from that to watch you die.

 

“I’m not mad at you, but I don’t think I can stay here, live here. I can’t watch you do this over and over.”

 

Steve is quiet for a long moment, and he looks down at his hands. Bucky pushes his palms into his eyes until he sees white, and his breath catches in his throat, but he pushes until he can breathe evenly.

 

 

After long moments, Steve says, “I was going to say, before you interrupted me,” and Bucky laughs softly and pulls his hands away from his eyes to look at Steve. “That I told Tony I was done. At least for now.”

 

“Oh,” Bucky says.

 

“Yeah, _oh._ ” Steve says. “I love you, too, Buck.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve heals fast enough that by the end of the week, he’s okay to sit in the passenger seat while Bucky drives the nineteen hours from New York to their little farmhouse outside Little Rock, Arkansas.

 

The last twenty miles are slow take longer than normal through the near foot of snow that’s piled up since they’ve been gone. They’re in the middle of nowhere, and the roads haven’t been plowed.

 

Bucky cannot put his finger on the feeling that springs up in his chest when the house comes into view. He knows that Steve hasn’t felt like anywhere he’s lived since waking up after the ice has felt like home, but Bucky imagines that this creaky little house is as close as they’re going to get. Nothing will ever compare to living out of each other’s pockets in an old and dusty Brooklyn, but this new-aged, single floored house has its own perks and privileges.

 

 

 

 

Tony drives out about a week later, and installs a specially designed Stark security system. It allows them to access the internet and get service on Steve’s cellphone, but they don’t have any traceable signal output. There’s an alarm system set up around the perimeter of their property, which is voice activated and barely noticeable save for the small metal panel that Tony placed near the thermostat by the front door.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They fall back into a pattern: Steve’s garden blooms again in the spring, Bucky reads and reads and signs up to complete an entire college degree online. They run and spend all of May rebuilding the porch after a particularly destructive tornado. They talk about getting a dog.

 

They fly to New York with fake passports for the July long weekend, and celebrate Steve’s birthday with the rest of the Avengers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before they fly back, Steve says, “I want to take you somewhere.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They ride Steve’s bike into Brooklyn, and Steve holds Bucky’s hand the entire time they walk down the street. People recognize him, but Captain America hasn’t been on the news for a long time. Bucky imagines it must be uncanny, to look up from one’s phone and see the faces of people who were just pictures in high school history books.

 

 

They stop at a corner, and Steve turns to face the other side of the street.

 

“That flower shop is owned by a woman whose grandmother lived in the same building as your parents. And Becca’s friend Sammy, do you remember her? Her son and his wife own the book store just that way.”

 

“This is where we lived,” Bucky says, squeezing Steve’s hand in his.

 

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I know it doesn’t look the same at all but—“

 

“Thank you,” Bucky says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky wakes up slowly. Steve’s not in bed, but that’s not unusual.

 

The morning is crisp, the sky blue but the air still cool without the real and imposing heat of the sun quite yet. Bucky pokes his head out the screen door and spots Steve. He’s stretched across the small wicker bench they’ve put out on the porch, a mug of coffee resting on his abdomen. Bucky goes into the kitchen and pours his own mug from the coffee pot.

 

He meets Steve outside, lifts his legs and sits with them in his lap.

 

They watch the sun comes up over the tree line on the eastern edge of their own private getaway. Steve digs his toes into Bucky’s thigh and says, “Good morning.”

 

And it is; it’s not perfect, but it’s safe and real, and it’s theirs. “Morning,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, find me on [tumblr](http://bittyjack.tumblr.com)


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